


Lead Me To The Garden

by livia_1291



Series: Tell Me What It's Like To Burn [4]
Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: M/M, Non-Penetrative Sex, Plotless Fluff, Post-Canon, emil västerström - Freeform, emil worries too much, i will not rest until Emil is conversational in Finnish, lalli hotakainen - Freeform, plotless smut, vague and slight exploration of trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:13:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28133736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livia_1291/pseuds/livia_1291
Summary: Emil and Lalli take a quick trip to Finland to visit Taru. This opens up some old wounds for Emil.
Relationships: Lalli Hotakainen/Emil Västerström
Series: Tell Me What It's Like To Burn [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1830850
Comments: 3
Kudos: 21





	Lead Me To The Garden

It’s a late autumn in Saimaa, and the dusky sky is a poetry of color, striped with pretty bands of pink and white and slate blue. The moon hangs low on the horizon, fat and orange, and Emil wants to reach out and scoop it into his palm, to roll it between his fingers until his skin is covered in light and dust. Lalli is already gone scouting, and he will not be back for many hours, so Emil is alone with his restless thoughts and the cool wind that sweeps up off the lake.

He’s standing on the deck of the cabin they’re staying in while they visit Taru - the Hollolas are distantly related to the Hotakainens, but nobody quite knows how anymore. (Tuuri knew, Lalli tells him as they travel through the winding canals of Finland. Emil is unsurprised by that. Tuuri knew nearly everything.) Beside that, Lalli had been homesick for the fathomless woods of his homeland. (He would never have admitted it, but it wasn’t hard to notice the way he looked up at the sound of spoken Finnish, or gravitated to any patch of land with more than three trees.) When Taru extended her invitation, it hadn’t taken much convincing to get Lalli to agree to a little vacation. 

_Vacation_ might have been a slight misnomer: Lalli had been called to scout the far margins of a protected settlement near Keuruu. There was suspicion that a _Kalma,_ a wicked being of sickness and rot, had moved into the area, but nobody had been able to figure out where it had settled. Taru had bragged that she knew the best scout in all of the Known World, and that if Lalli couldn’t find it, there was no _Kalma_ , and the village must be plagued by something else. Lalli had told Emil as soon as he had gotten the telegram, and Emil had decided that they would take two week’s leave and stay for a bit - it wouldn’t take Lalli long to get the job done, and they are both in desperate need of some R&R. The Cleansers could spare them for a bit, especially since the summer’s heat is only just beginning to recede into autumn’s crispness.

“I think it’s just a poor water source,” Taru tells them over dinner in the main mess on their first night. It’s simple fare, just boiled potatoes with salted butter, and thick slices of roasted ham, but Emil is starving, and eats with gusto. Lalli is still recovering from being sick on all three of the ships they took on their way to Finland, and he is leaning against Emil, poking boredly at a potato with the end of his fork and occasionally tuning into the conversation. They are speaking slow Finnish - Taru so that Emil can understand, and Emil because he still trips over his words sometimes. (Though to Emil’s credit, he has gotten good enough to hold his own in conversation, even if he keeps messing up the endings on his words.) “If it really was a _Kalma_ , we would have had an outbreak by now. A fourth of that settlement is non-immune.”

Emil shifts a little in his too-hard seat, and Lalli hisses at him in displeasure, disinterested in a pillow that moves around so much, before settling back down when Emil placates him with a slice of lean ham from his own plate and murmurs his apologies for having the audacity to sit up a little too much for Lalli’s discerning and weary taste.

“What if it’s something worse than a _Kalma_?” He asks, and Taru presses her lips together, taking a swig of her water as she processes his question. Emil and Lalli are no strangers to things so terrible that their names are only spoken as whispers on the cold winter wind, or written as hasty, desperate scrawls in the margins of old books. It is a wise question to ask, she concedes, if not a little paranoid.

“If it was something worse,” she reasons, setting her empty cup down on the scratched and dented wooden table with a soft _clunk_ , “it would have struck already, in the heat of the summer.”

Emil and Lalli exchange a look, a sort of understanding that Taru is not privy to.

“Not all the time,” Lalli murmurs, and Taru sighs, reaching for the water pitcher on the table to refill her cup until it is nearly overflowing. Her smile is a little forced when she raises the cup to her lips and drinks until it is no longer in danger of splashing out onto the table.

“I’m sure,” she says, in Finnish so quick and fluid that it is clear which one of them the words are meant for, “that you’ll be able to get to the bottom of it without issue.”

* * *

Later that night, when they are settled in their accommodations (very fine, Emil notes as he runs his fingers over the heavy blue and white quilt draped across the foot of their bed, and notes Lalli’s satisfaction that there is a little sauna for them to enjoy,) he wonders over Taru’s sureness that what they’re dealing with is no worse than a particularly nasty troll.

“Be honest with me,” Emil begins in that strange mix of Swedish and Finnish that they tend to prefer with each other. Lalli rolls his eyes as he zips his high boots over his calves and reaches for his fur cloak, running thoughtful, slender fingers over the bright patterns on the back.

“I am always honest with you,” he tells him, and Emil sighs his weak laughter, shedding his shirt and grabbing the softer nightclothes he’s brought with him from where he has deposited them in a heap on the bed.

“Fair point. Do you think it’s really a _Kalma_? Or is it maybe…” He pauses, leaning against the doorframe of the bathroom. Uttering the name of a feared creature is forbidden in Finnish, but Lalli understands him just the same. Silence speaks volumes.

“I don’t think it’s _that._ But nothing,” Lalli huffs as he grabs his rifle from where it leans by the door and slings it over the narrow span of his shoulders, “is impossible.”

* * *

When Lalli returns in the morning, just before the cold sun cuts through the grey pre-dawn light, he finds that Emil is still awake, propped up in the pillows with a lamp glowing gold on the bedside table, and a book spread open in his lap. He knows he’s just skimming it at best - it’s all in very poetic Finnish, and Lalli knows Emil isn’t partial to reading at the best of times.

“You didn’t sleep.” It isn’t a question. Lalli is too familiar with the signs of exhaustion to write off the dark smudges beneath Emil’s pretty eyes as a trick of the early light.

Emil doesn’t even try to correct him. Lying to Lalli is a fruitless endeavor; the scout has an uncanny way of seeing straight through him. “I was...worried about you,” he admits, sliding out from beneath the sheets to look him over as he strips down, throwing his scouting clothes in a basket to be taken to decon. Lalli lets him stare - this is nothing new to either of them - and goes to heat the sauna.

“Stupid,” he chides as he grabs a fluffy white towel to sit on from the little rack in their bathroom. Emil is almost relieved at that little jab. It’s so familiar, so decidedly _Lalli_ that he knows all must be well in their world. “It was just a dead cow in the stream that feeds the lake. Not a _Kalma._ Not...that.”

“Oh.” Emil perches on the edge of the bed, and Lalli watches him for a moment before shaking his head and holding out his hand in a silent offering as he reaches for the door to the sauna. That haunted look in Emil’s eyes is not unfamiliar. He has worn it himself, when he thinks too much on the brokenness of a place that used to be called Denmark, and a grave that has gone cold and untended. Sometimes he catches the same expression on Reynir’s freckled face, and even, from time to time, in Sigrun’s wild eyes, or on Mikkel’s otherwise serene countenance. They all bear a weight that they can only share with each other.

Lalli’s unusual comforts are difficult to parse out sometimes, but this one, Emil gets. He leaves his clothes on the bed and goes to join Lalli in the dim steam of the sauna, and in the quiet sacredness of the cedar walls, he allows himself to remember, and prays to the old gods of this land that someday, he might be allowed to forget.

* * *

Sleep comes easily with Lalli curled beside him beneath the quilts, and Emil does not wake again until the sun is beginning to sink into the treeline, plunging the wild forests outside their window into vibrant dusk. 

Lalli is already awake. Emil can see him through the cracked door, leaning on the birch railing of their deck, and he throws off the covers, padding outside to stand at his left shoulder. He keeps quiet, and watches the forest in a silent hope that Lalli might share with him all the things that he sees with mage’s eyes.

The scout is still for several moments, and Emil knows better than to interrupt his reverie. When he does move, at last, to look at the man beside him, his wide grey eyes are alight with the gold of the setting sun, and Emil’s heart catches in his throat, because _wow_.

“You don’t need to worry about me,” Lalli murmurs at length, and Emil doesn’t have a chance to respond before Lalli reaches for him and kisses him, and all at once, Emil understands what it’s like to burn. He smolders under his touch until he is nothing but gasping embers, and then Lalli takes his cheeks between his palms and kisses him once more, and he is whole again.

“What are you…?” He manages between fervent kisses, and Lalli draws back, skimming his cool fingers along the fullness of Emil’s cheeks. 

“Kissing you,” he states, as though this should be completely obvious, and Emil is a fool for asking. Emil rests his hands on the razor-edges of Lalli’s hips, more to steady himself than to steady Lalli, who is as collected as he always is.

“It feels like more than that.”

“Mhm.” 

From that point on, they are so tangled together that he is not sure which one of them stumbles over the threshold first, or who closes and locks the door behind them, because Lalli’s mouth is fixed on his, hungry and wanting, and he’s suddenly more dizzy than he’s ever been before. It’s a wonder he hasn’t fallen to his knees already, he muses during a singular moment of clarity when they pull back to breathe and Lalli looks at him with a gaze so keen that Emil can only hold it for a few seconds before it is too much.

Emil falls back onto the bed, breathless and rumpled, shirt half-undone and throat already sporting a bruise that will be obvious come morning. Lalli follows him to bed, albeit with far more grace, and straddles his hips. His palms rest on either side of Emil’s temples, fingers playing in the soft golden strands that frame Emil’s flushed face like a halo. 

“I want you,” states Lalli, in slow, emphatic Finnish, looking down at Emil with that same casual, self-assured confidence that he’s had since they met. 

For a moment, Emil isn’t able to talk. He wants to say “ _So have me, I’m yours, I want you too, I always have,_ ” but all of his hard-earned Finnish seems to have flown south with half the blood in his body, and all he can manage is “okay.”

Lalli searches his face, brows furrowed, and Emil finally marshalls enough Finnish to whisper a hoarse, longing, “I want you too.” That is all the permission Lalli needs, because then he is pressing fluttering, exploratory kisses to the burning pulse at Emil’s throat, and Emil can only gasp his approval when Lalli uses his teeth on the softness of his earlobe, and then licks the sweetness of the hollow of his jaw.

This continues for a minute longer before Lalli pulls back, expression uncertain, and Emil reaches up to brush a strand of pale hair from his eyes with a knowing hand.

“Let me,” he breathes, and Lalli nods, shoulders slumping in relief. For how confident Lalli is in himself, and how at ease he is in his own body, he does not much like to be in charge in situations like this. Emil is more than pleased to take the lead, to have Lalli spread and wanting beneath him, looking up at him with a sort of wild, naked trust that makes Emil wonder what he wouldn’t do to secure Lalli’s safety and happiness.

Lalli isn’t often one for physical touch, but the way Emil is unbuttoning and easing his shirt off his shoulders makes his whole body tremble with anticipation. Finally, Emil touches him, skims his hands reverently over the quiver of his stomach and the heaving of his chest, writes his name on the elegant slopes of his shoulders, presses his lips to that too-sensitive spot at the juncture of his shoulder and neck, and he hisses, curling his fingers into the sheets. Emil is prone to taking his sweet time, learning every inch of Lalli’s lovely, willowy form with his hot mouth and whispering promises in lilting Swedish until Lalli is a keening, impatient wreck.

“Hurry up,” he gripes, and Emil laughs throatily, lifting his head from where he is lavishing torturously sensual kisses on the softness of Lalli’s stomach, reaching for the waistband of his pants and looking up to him for permission, which is granted with a singular nod.

Emil pulls back to shed his own clothes, and Lalli props himself up in the pillows to watch the way the muscles of his back flex and ripple as he tosses his half-unbuttoned shirt aside and yanks off his pants and underwear to reveal strong legs and an already half-hard cock. 

The room might have been cold if Lalli had not been pressed so close to the searing heat of Emil’s body, and when Emil brackets Lalli’s lovely, smooth thighs between his knees and leans down to kiss him again, Lalli arches into him, aching for the friction he’s been denied so far. He won’t beg - not with his words, at least, that’s beneath him - but he knows other ways to get what he wants. Quick, clever hands skim down the planes of Emil’s sides, and then dip into the narrow space between them, grabbing Emil’s cock and pumping once, twice, to entice him into action. Their kiss is broken by Emil’s hitched gasp, and he knows that he will be getting what he wants when Emil sits up and pulls him into his lap.

“You’re so beautiful,” Emil breathes, breath catching when Lalli rolls his hips with a low, insistent growl. His thin lips part in a sigh as Emil finally relents, taking both of their cocks into his calloused hand and stroking the way he knows Lalli likes it: firm, quick, and steady.

Lalli rests his hands on Emil’s shoulders and tosses his head back, lower lip caught between his teeth as he rocks slowly into Emil’s knowing grasp, and Emil leans in to press a whisper of a kiss to his bared throat, trying to keep himself together as Lalli drops his chin again and transfixes him with a gaze that glitters like the glacial sounds whose depths he cannot begin to fathom. His tongue trips around the syllables of Emil’s name, and when Emil twists his wrist just so, Lalli bows into his arms and comes with a sudden, broken gasp.

When Lalli comes apart in his arms, Emil glimpses all of the sharp, shining edges of his soul, if only for a single, breathtaking moment, and that is enough to send him over the edge. He finishes with one arm tight around Lalli’s thin waist, and his face buried in his shoulder as he whispers _“Lalli, Lalli, Lalli.”_

* * *

The evening light glances off the soft waves in the lake as Emil stands on the deck, cleaned up and back in his clothes. His hair is still slightly damp from a warm, shared shower, and he is grateful for the heavy coat he has wrapped around his shoulders as he watches the sun go down.

He looks up as the door creaks open, and Lalli flows across the threshold, joining Emil as they watch night fall over the forests of Finland.

“It’s beautiful here,” he murmurs, and Lalli nods his agreement, resting his palms against the sanded curve of the birchwood railing. “Do you miss it when you’re in Sweden?”

Lalli thinks for a moment, head tilted just a little to the right before he decides, “Some of it yes. Some of it no.”

This answer is so typically Lalli, neither here nor there, that Emil has to laugh, shaking his head as he cocks his hip to bear his weight on his right leg. “Right. What do you miss?”

Another pause. “I miss the forests. The quiet. Understanding everyone,” He admits, and Emil nods, digging his hands into his pockets. The sun is below the treeline now, and the flickering beginnings of constellations are starting to pierce the fading pink sky.

“And what don’t you miss?”

“Keuruu.” This answer comes far more swiftly. There had been a time in Lalli’s life when he had been ready to live and die in the walls of the city, an anonymous soul who sought nothing more than a quiet life away from the childhood horrors and the irreversible trauma of a life in the unforgiving lakes. “Being here makes me think too much. I like life with you better.”

“Oh.” Emil doesn’t quite know how to respond to such an honor, so he reaches out and rests his hand over Lalli’s.

The moon is rising over the lake, slightly less full than it had been the previous night when Emil had waited alone. Lalli whispers something under his breath, too quick and fluid for Emil to parse, but he thinks it might be a runo for thanks.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello friends!
> 
> This has been in the works since Summer, and frankly, I am sick of looking at it, so here, have this even though I’m not proud of it. I've learned that I suck at writing smut, so at least I got that out of this?
> 
> I'm out of school for the rest of the month, so I'm relaxing and recovering from the weirdest semester of my life. I'm planning on some hiking later, but for now I'm baking and trying to write. All of my final papers really took it out of me!
> 
> I hope everyone's doing well, and may your holiday season be a bright one!
> 
> xx.
> 
> Liv


End file.
